From the Gallery

“Flowing Under” is a project which reunites for the first time the works of three artists from distant and different contexts; from Brazil, Gabriel Borba Filho (São Paulo 1942) and from Lithuania, Algirdas Šeškus (Vilnius, 1945) and Gintautas Trimakas (Vilnius 1958).

The projects which articulate the show were all made in countries under the somber umbrella of two autocracies. The works by Gabriel Borba were realized under the military dictatorship which lasted until 1985 and the works by Algridas Šeškus and Gintautas Trimakas were made when Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union in the early 80s of the last Century.

The idea of how a particular work of art fits in its own time depends on the social intelligence of the artists. In this case it was determined by the standards of two societies which settled the criteria of what was possible or acceptable and what was not. This show has a similar approach to the “Salon des refusés”. The works were not accepted or understood by its commissioners or they were dismissed by the organisms to which they were presented by the artists themselves.

Gabriel Borba, an architect himself, presented a controversial project to IX Congreso de ArquitetosI de São Paulo. His work Jaula da Anta was widely critical of the system and altered the foundations of the bourgeois collective he belonged to. When he presented Jaula da Anta he caused a small revolution which provoked his expulsion of the association of architects of São Paulo, later that day it was readmitted. This work was then presented in 1977 along with other of his works at La Biennale de Paris in the same year.

In 1984 Gintautas Trimakas applied with a proposal featuring the streets of Vilnius, in order to enter into the “official” Lithuanian Circle of Photographers. His images of an empty, grey and desolated city did not catch the eye of the people in charge of the selection, who were not prone to select a group of photographs which showed the sad reality of the moment in Vilnius under Soviet times.

Around the same period Algirdas Šeškus received the commission of creating some images of flowers and fruits in order to decorate the main offices of the gardening section in the city town hall. The commission was paid but the works never were shown or displayed they ended up under the sofa (literally) of his home until very recently.

Apparently time always delivers important works in the end, no matter if they were intended to be buried under the dust of some now forgotten minds.

_{PM8 - Francisco Salas 2025}

 

My commentary

In 1916 In an interview, Francisco Salas and I talked about Jaula da Anta for the first time. Here's an excerpt: 

"Francisco Salas: It springs to mind the work of Jaula da anta, 1970, a project which was rather polemic at the time and which provoked people so that you were expelled from the Colegio de arquitetos de SP and then you were back again in the same day, why were you expelled the first time and what made the members of the committee want you back again?

Gabriel Borba: The thing is: let’s say I was being seen as a naughty boy doing preposterous things and the project I presented to a International Congress of Architects, with no selection, was taken as provocation because of the theme, of the memorial and of the place. By chance, and as I said there was no selection, my project was hung between two of those popes of Brazilian architecture and the people became bothered with it. At the auditorium, during the debates, someone said that it was absurd and because of it Gabriel Borba should be expelled from the Institute of Architects.
I was told people approved of the idea but others came in my defense so enthusiastically that they changed their minds. In fact I was not really expelled from the Institute so quick was the action. I didn’t see a thing because I was busy with something else. I was inscribing myself in a contest of Industrial Design in which I won, later, the first prize..."

Nowadays, seeing this work on display, the occasion comes to mind. The Congress and the exhibition, as I recall, were proposed by the IAB, Institute of Architects of Brazil, despite the military government that was already exhausted at the time and the penultimate president of the period proposed a political opening, 1974, and entrusted the next one with carrying it out. I remember the title "détente".
What I did, the Jaula da Anta (Cage of the Tapir), and what happened around it, was not related to military oppression, but to the function of architecture as a cultural and social asset. A subject  of the time.

Transcribing the memorial and annotation contained in the exposed drawing:

"The architect is responsible for organizing the space. But it is his duty to consider the use, purpose, and pertinence of the space to be organized"

"Two Architectures: One wide, large, monumental. Another simple and close.
That one of the Nation, of the Continent, of the World. This one, from Anta (the rest is just concret – it makes a better pun in portugues = the rest is forgetfulness)

 

It's worth remembering that the trestel in the center of the drawing refers to the name ANTA.

_{Gabriel Borba 2025}